Among those responsible for Mitt Romney's loss, according to the
WSJ, include Chief Supreme Court Justice John
Roberts and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke, two Republican nominees who the board argues gave
Obama crucial boosts with the healthcare ruling and quantitative
easing, respectively. Romney also gets a fair share of the
blame, primarily for his embrace of far-right immigration
policies.

The real culprits, however, are the voters who chose "hope over
experience":

Mr. Obama's campaign stitched together a shrunken but still
decisive version of his 2008 coalition—single women, the young
and culturally liberal, government and other unions workers, and
especially minority voters.

He said little during the campaign about his first term and even
less about his plans for a second. Instead his strategy was to
portray Mitt
Romney as a plutocrat and intolerant threat to each of those
voting blocs. No contraception for women. No green cards for
immigrants. A return to Jim Crow via voter ID laws. No Pell
grants for college.

But the paper's editorial board is cheered by the fact that U.S.
politics are impermanent:

Some of our conservative friends will argue that Mr. Obama's
victory thus represents a decline in national virtue and a
tipping point in favor of the "takers" over the makers. They will
say the middle class chose Mr. Obama's government blandishments
over Mr. Romney's opportunity society. We don't think such a
narrow victory of an incumbent President who continues to be
personally admired justifies such a conclusion.

Perhaps this fear will be realized over time, but such a fate
continues to be in our hands. There are few permanent victories
or defeats in American politics, and Tuesday wasn't one of them.
The battle for liberty begins anew this morning.